Patty Toma's long-ago boyfriend, who is also a buddy of David Toma, is a restaurateur with a big money problem. To finance the restaurant, he borrowed money from loan sharks who have become increasingly nasty as his "vigorish" (payment with interest) goes deeper into arrears. They stop him at a bank's night depository and cheerfully take the restaurant's entire revenues for the week, leaving him with a nasty knife-slash wound on one hand as a reminder that he only paid up for the one week and he's still due the next week, with lots of so-called interest payments. The restaurateur is getting increasingly desperate -- he had already paid more than triple the amount of the loan with only a minuscule reduction of the principal -- and Toma volunteers to help. Soon, the leader of the loan-sharking operation is murdered in an apparent power play. Toma finds out that one of his street-contact "friends" was involved in the killing, and manages to infiltrate the new gang. Features a great gunfight at the end where Toma manages to knock out or pin down everybody without using his gun -- despite dodging multiple gunshots.
—Peter Harris